A Chair for the Ache, A Cup for the Hands

“They ate rolls and drank coffee. Then he began to talk. They nodded when the baker began to speak of loneliness, and of the sense of doubt and limitation that had come to him in his middle years. He told them what it was like to be childless all these years. To repeat the days with the ovens endlessly full and endlessly empty” - A Small, Good Thing , Raymond Carver

I think of that small table.
In that plain room with the warm rolls and the cheap coffee, nobody tries to rescue anyone, nobody reaches for big words, there is only the slow work of staying, of chewing, of listening to a man name his own empty years, and in that steady, ordinary rhythm the night loosens its fist a little. I think of how warmth travels through the fingers into the chest, how steam rises and then disappears, how a body, surprised to be cared for, remembers it still belongs to the earth and to this hour.

This is the kind of peace that does not pretend to be an answer. It is the peace that comes when we stop running circles around our hurt and let it sit, give it a plate and a place and a little time, while someone keeps the light on and refills the cup without asking for a story. There is a gentleness in that arrangement, the quiet hum of a room that agrees to hold what it cannot fix and that gentleness is enough to keep a person from slipping under.

Maybe this is how we keep going after the blow, by choosing small company over large conclusions, by trusting the simple acts that ask for no return: a slice passed across the table, a nod that means stay, the soft scrape of a chair that will not hurry you.

In the morning the ache will wake with us, but it will meet a body that has tasted a little sweetness and a heart that has been carried through one more hour, and sometimes that is the whole miracle.

Grief is still there; it just learns our pace for a while, as if it, too, is tired of standing.

A Great Quote

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.” — Slyvia Plath

Book Review: “The Summer Book — Tove Jansson

This book is small like an island and deep like the sea around it. A grandmother and a little girl spend a summer together on a bare rock of land. The father is there but mostly in the background, working, watching, quiet. The mother is gone, and the book never turns that into a speech. It lets the wind, the water, and the slow days do the talking.

What I loved is how the two of them make a life out of very little. They walk over stones that still hold the day’s heat. They lie on their backs and watch clouds. They build a tiny city out of bark and moss, then let the tide take it. They bicker, forgive, wander, come home to simple food, and sleep with salt still in their hair. Nothing grand happens, and yet the pages feel full.

The grief is present, but it isn’t loud. It sits with them like a third person at the table. The girl asks sharp, honest questions the way children do; the grandmother answers with mischief, patience, and the kind of wisdom that comes from having lived a long time in real weather. Sometimes she tells a story to keep fear from growing. Sometimes she lets silence do the work. The book trusts that small rituals tidying a path, checking the sky, boiling coffee can carry love where big explanations cannot.

There is a scene that stays with me: a night walk over the rocks when the sea is breathing evenly and the world feels both close and endless. The girl holds the grandmother’s hand, then lets go, then takes it again. Nothing is resolved. But the air is kind, and the island holds them, and the heart understands that this is what safety can look like after loss—movement, company, and a place to stand.

Jansson’s language is plain and clean. She notices the exact look of lichen, the way a gull tilts, the way a child’s mood turns with weather. The chapters are short, almost like little stones you can pocket. You read one and feel calmer; you read three and feel braver. By the end, you know these two people as if you had shared their porch and counted the same stars.

Read this if you want a book that makes room for grief without pressing it, and makes space for joy without noise. It reminds you that peace doesn’t arrive all at once; it grows out of small days done well—walking, mending, talking, keeping an eye on the sky—and that love, at its best, is simply staying near, season after season, while the tide goes out and comes back in.

P.S.: If this newsletter brought you calm, pass it on to someone who’d enjoy the silence too.

About : Every two weeks, I sit down to write a quiet note: something like a pause in the middle of a restless day. Inside, you’ll find small reflections on change and growth, a line or two that lingers in the heart, and a book that has left me seeing the world a little differently.

Think of it less as a publication and more as a letter with the kind of words that steady us when the world moves too fast.